What follows, obviously – but it's worth saying anyway – is highly subjective and inevitably incomplete. First of all, I give you the two writers, from both sides of the Atlantic, who have inspired more pastiche, homage, parody, downright plagiarism, and further originality than most of their rivals: Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett.

In poetry, I'm inclined to suggest that Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes have also exerted a disproportionate impact, though I'm certain there are many others that I've missed.

Finally, from the last 25 years, I'd suggest that WG Sebald, Paul Auster and Martin Amis have each had a profound influence on a generation of new writers. But what do you think? Which writers have had the greatest effect on course of literary culture?